ill be even, some new
equation given." "Christ will explain each separate anguish in the
fair schoolroom of the sky."

"A death-blow is a life-blow to some
Who, till they died, did not alive become;
Who, had they lived, had died, but when
They died, vitality begun."

The reader who has had the patience to accompany me through these
pages devoted to Miss Dickinson will surely own, whether in scoff or
praise, the essentially American nature of her muse. Her defects are
easily paralleled in the annals of English literature; but only in the
liberal atmosphere of the New World, comparatively unshadowed by
trammels of authority and standards of taste, could they have
co-existed with so much of the highest quality.

A prominent phenomenon in the development of American literature--so
prominent as to call for comment even in a fragmentary and haphazard
sketch like the present--is the influence exercised by the monthly
magazine. The editors of the leading literary periodicals have been
practically able to wield a censorship to which there is no parallel
in England. The magazine has been the recognised gateway to the
literary public; the sweep of the editorial net has been so wide that
it has gathered in nearly all the best literary work of the past few
decades, at any rate in the department of _belles lettres_. It is not
easy to name many important works of pure literature, as distinct from
the scientific, the philosophical, and the instructive, that have not
made their bow to the public through the pages of the _Century_, the
_Atlantic Monthly_, or some one or other of their leading competitors.
And probably the proportion of works by new authors that have appeared
in the same way is still greater. There are, possibly, two sides as to
the value of this supremacy of the magazine, though to most observers
the advantages seem to outweigh the disadvantages. Among the former
may be reckoned the general encouragement of reading, the
opportunities afforded to young writers, the raising of the rate of
authors' pay, the dissemination of a vast quantity of useful and
salutary information in a popular form. Perhaps of more importance
than any of these has been the maintenance of that purity of moral
tone in which modern American literature is superior to all its
contemporaries. Malcontents may rail at "grandmotherly legislation in
letters," at the undue deference paid to the maiden's blush, at the
encouragement of the